24 posts categorized "JUDY GARLAND"

If you like retro signage and cool photos as much as I do, check out Retrologist, and start with this interesting entry on a strange survivor of the 9/11 WTC collapse: An intact newspaper from 1969 announcing the death of Judy Garland.

Judy Garland never got to write her memoirs (imagine what she'd have said!), but Randy L. Schmidt has helpfully done the next best thing in gathering all of her most important and interesting interviews and encounters from throughout her short life.

Gypsy Rose Lee: “I was just telling Judy Garland that I wish she wouldn't diet so much and get so thin. Not that you don't look wonderful on television, but even when you put on a little weight, your legs stay lean.”

Judy Garland: “Yes, well, I just demand that they stay lean. They have to get around so much. They're a moving target.”

If you didn't know he could sing, he can't—the show will include re-mastered Judy performances and a Q&A from Luft.

One story he previewed for the L.A. Times involves watching, of all things, a hockey game with his mom and his sister Lorna Luft (b. November 21, 1952) in bed one day:

“My mom was kind of tired and she looked kind of frustrated.' I said, 'How do you feel?' She looks at us, walks over to the TV and she goes, 'How do I feel? See that hockey game? You know the puck? That's how I feel.' And she walks off. Then we started laughing.”

Um, it's not that funny!

Sounds like a can't-miss presentation, whether it turns out to be touching, fun, moving or just plain odd.

Metrosource's "definitive" list of gay icons from its October/November 2013 ish is pretty objectionable (as are all such lists). I think the Top 5 is pretty good, but things get steadily dicier as it moves along.

Scott Nevins, that flashy boy from Flushing who abandoned NYC for Los Angeles (traitor!), was back in town with a new stand-up show at the Metropolitan Room, and he was not taking NO for an answer. He wanted me to come, and he wanted me to pay. This was a foreign concept to me. How did one do it...pay...for a show? (In reality, I do it all the time, but I'm definitely spoiled when it comes to shows I intend to review.)

As a kid, Scott says he shit glitter when he discovered a "Dorothy" from The Wizard of Oz doll.

Well, I believe in supporting theater, and in supporting talent, and let me tell you, dropping $20 on Scott Nevins is a can't-lose proposition and sounds fun even if no stage is around. His NYC comeback show was sharp, charming and as funny as he is ripped. It's cruel that someone with such prominent abs should be able to incite so many belly laughs, but Nevins, with a combo of scatological humor, family gossip, celebrity dish and self-targeted barbs about his own vanity and love life, does just that.

As funny as his other material was (in particular his tales of growing up in a drunken Irish Catholic family), I was partial to his celebrity observations, as in the shit the little spy noticed while he was working with people like Lisa Vanderpump (or was that "Vandercunt?"), Lorna Luft (a good pal of his now), Carol Channing (he's one of her favorite people once she figures out who the hell he is) and others. In the same way his wit captures their idiosyncrasies, his beautiful singing voice captures Judy Garland—he ended his raucous set by singing relatively contemporary songs like "What's Love Got to Do With It?", "Last Dance," "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" and "Like a Virgin" as Garland, the last of which I recorded and posted above with his kind permission.